Rabbi Ronald Shapiro, spiritual leader of Congregation Shalom, was leading a group from his synagogue on an Israel tour in early November 1999. One day during that trip, members of the group were startled to see news stories in the International Herald Tribune and the Jerusalem Post about something that happened at their synagogue.
These international newspapers reported that Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland at the Proclaim Jubilee service held at Shalom on Nov. 7 gave a speech that acknowledged and apologized for the ways that “we Catholics have through centuries acted in a fashion contrary to God’s law toward our Jewish brothers and sisters” and how “we Catholics contributed to the attitudes that made the Holocaust possible.”
“The whole bus was just abuzz, reading in Israel how Archbishop Weakland at our congregation had said this,” Shapiro recalled in a telephone interview.
They weren’t the only ones. A few months later, The New York Times quoted Rabbi A. James Rudin, inter-religious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee, as saying that Weakland’s words had “electrified the Jewish community, not only in Milwaukee but throughout the United States.”
Weakland himself in a recent telephone conversation said the reaction was “a bit of a surprise,” especially since “I was still working at [the speech] up to the last minute.” Moreover, he had modeled it on a document prepared some years prior by the French bishops.
Even so, Weakland acknowledged that this speech “would not have been possible without 25 years of dialogue between Catholics and Jews in this city” — dialogue that he had devoted time and effort to fostering during his tenure as leader of Milwaukee’s Catholics, which began in 1977 and will end this year with his retirement.
Visit to Mt. Sinai
His devotion to this work is greatly appreciated in the Jewish community. “We have an extraordinary relationship with him,” said Paula Simon, executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations. “Among the most rewarding and special perks of this job has been the relationship [the MJCCR staff] has had with him.”
“There’s only one word for Rembert Weakland, and that is he’s a mensch,” said Harriet Schachter McKinney, executive director of the American Jewish Committee-Milwaukee Chapter. She was present at the Proclaim Jubilee event and “a lot of us said ‘Shehechayanu’ that we lived to see the day when a Catholic of his stature would step out in front of his community to help the healing process between Jews and Catholics.”
And this was just one aspect of Weakland’s interest in social justice and community issues generally. Among other things, Weakland chaired the U.S. bishops committee that wrote a pastoral letter on “Economic Justice for All” in the 1980s; served on the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council; issued statements supporting raising the minimum wage and opposing the death penalty.
“I’ve personally been on panels addressing racism in Milwaukee with Weakland,” McKinney said. “It is an issue he cares about deeply. He has demonstrated his commitment to an inclusive Milwaukee community.”
Shapiro came to Milwaukee a year after Weakland did. He not only saw the archbishop in interfaith relations work — “we knew his interest was sincere and part of his religious quest” — but also established “a nice social and collegial relationship” with him, in which, among other things, they would compare notes about their sermons during breaks at Milwaukee Symphony concerts.
Shapiro will be sharing some of his thoughts about Weakland next week, when the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee holds a service in Weakland’s honor on Wednesday, May 15, 4:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 914 E. Knapp St. (The public is invited. For more information, call the Interfaith Conference, 414-276-9050.)
Weakland’s interest in dialogue with the Jewish community began long before he came to Milwaukee. When he was abbot of a monastery in Pennsylvania in the 1960s, he helped organize “one of the first dialogues between Jewish and Catholic scholars” during the period of the Second Vatican Council.
Moreover, during his tenure as head of the Benedictine order in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he went to Israel “every two years” to visit monasteries there. The year after Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula in the 1967 Six Day War, the Israeli government brought Weakland to the traditional site of Mt. Sinai.
So Weakland said he knew that “I wanted to be involved in the community and the interfaith aspects of the community” as soon as he became archbishop here. A quarter century later, “the dialogue is still strong,” although “it doesn’t have quite the same personages as it had earlier.”
“When I first came, Rabbi David Shapiro [spiritual leader of then-Congregation Anshe Sfard] was the great luminary; we all looked up to him,” Weakland continued. “There have been so many changes … it takes a while to create the same friendships and trust.”
After his retirement becomes official, which may not be until a successor is appointed, likely “before the end of the summer,” Weakland intends to stay in Milwaukee.
“I expect to be writing and doing things, but not so much here in the city, other than my musical interests,” he said. “I have to give a wide space to my successor.”
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